Pages

One Little Word

New Year... One Little Word﻿

I know, I have posted all kinds of New Year's activities here on Classroom Confections, but I have one more to share. (Imagine that!) This is an activity I did with my kids today, which was their first day back from the Christmas holiday. Instead of doing the typical resolution, I took an idea shared on the blog Ali Edwards and turned it into a full blown lesson. Ali encourages you to choose a word for yourself and embrace it for the year. Head over to her site and read all the details.

Here is what I did for my lesson. First we talked about what a resolution is. Remember, I teach 4th graders, so they have heard the word many times. They then shared some typical resolutions, such as, "I plan to make good grades." After many common resolutions had been shared, I put up a list of character traits, such as this one HERE, and I said something like, "If your resolution was to make good grades, what kind of word would you use to describe that?" They said something like, "hardworking". We then went through the character trait list and circled all of the words that we thought were positive words. I then explained to them that sometimes it might be best to have one little word that helps us remember what we strive to be like.

After students had chosen their own one little word, they wrote a paragraph that started something like, "For 2012, the word I will focus on is lovable." They then wrote details depicting some of the things they will try to focus on related to their one little word. And of course, kids always like to add their own artistic touch, so I gave them a number one to decorate however they wanted.They included their one little word along the bottom of the number. I then stapled the number to the writing. Here is what they look like.....

If you would like to do this One Little Word activity with your students, here are the Freebies.

If your comment is made on a post that was written over 10 days ago, moderation is needed due to the amount of SPAM comments I am getting. Some can be totally inappropriate.....Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog posts. What you have to share is important. I look forward to posting what you have to say as soon as I can. ~Molly